Rawls & Nozick Liberalism & Libertarianism

1. Training, 11/05/2011 Rawls & NozickLiberalism & Libertarianism Warwick Debating Society

2. Rawls - Overview • Society as a cooperative venture for mutual gain – cooperation > toiling as a hermit outside society. • Redistributive system. • We are born with abilities, characteristics etc. which are out of our control so we should use them to benefit society as a whole.

3. Rawls – Veil of cliché ignorance Purpose: Determine what would be a ‘just’ society to live in – ‘justice as fairness’ • Can be used to generally show what is ‘just’. • Imagine not knowing your characteristics or abilities e.g. age, sex, race, intellect etc. • Would want what is fair for all so that you do not suffer from potential injustices.

4. ‘Justice as fairness’ • Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme for all; and in this scheme the equal political liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value. • Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: (a) they are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and (b), they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.

5. Rawls – ‘Maximin’ Society • Rejects equalization of net pay rates through confiscatory taxes on higher pay. • Happy for large inequalities in wealth if it is to the benefit of the least well-off in society. • Lower tax rates at the low end, wage subsidies for low-wage workers, etc. – to pull up the pay for low end workers to a more adequate level and thus to involve them more widely and fully in society’s market economy

6. Nozick - Overview • Liberty and Difference are contradictory. • The problem he confronts is – how do we address these harms of the past without creating new harms? • According to Nozick, a society cannot unfold history to fairly address the harms (especially distant harms) of the past without creating new injustices. 

7. Nozick continued • Taxes are unfair. • - Any government which forcibly taxed rich people and redistributed their wealth to help poor people was violating the liberty of the rich. Governments, he argued, had no right to encroach on the rights of individuals by taking their money and giving it to others. Governments shouldn't act like Robin hood, robbing the rich to • - This was especially the case if people's wealth had arisen through talent or hard work. Nozick held strongly to the rights of the individual, and advocated a minimal state which maintained law and order but did nothing to redistribute wealth. Give to the poor.

8. Nozick - Conclusion • Argues among other things that a distribution of goods is just if brought about by free exchange among consenting adults and from a just starting position, even if large inequalities subsequently emerge from the process. • People should not be treated as ends (what he termed 'separateness of persons') • Non-coercive slave contracts

9. The End.